Léon Hennique Novel
Complete Novel 'A Character' & Rare French Literary Translations
Category: French Translations
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First English translation of Ernest Raynaud’s La Mêlée Symboliste (1890-1900), the second volume of his Portraits et Souvenirs (1918). Raynaud, a poet and active participant in the French Symbolist movement, provides firsthand accounts of the literary battles, personalities, and cultural milieu of fin-de-siècle Paris. This memoir offers intimate portraits of major figures including Verlaine, Mallarmé, and Wilde, alongside vivid descriptions…
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First English translation of Adolphe Retté’s Symbolism: Anecdotes and Memories (Le Symbolisme: Anecdotes et Souvenirs, 1903), a firsthand account of the French Symbolist movement by one of its participants. Retté provides intimate portraits of key figures including Mallarmé, Verlaine, and Zola, along with vivid descriptions of the literary gatherings, journals, and cafés that defined fin-de-siècle Paris. This…
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Nina de Villard by Édouard Manet (“La dame aux éventails”, 1873) The following is Villiers de L’isle-Adam’s article that appeared in the August 24, 1888 issue of Gil Blas. . After a Venetian soirée at Nina de Villard’s exquisite mansion on the Rue des Moines, our garden dinner party had acquired an unexpected observer. From…
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The account that follows is translated from Édouard Dujardin’s Mallarmé, par un des siens, published by Messein in Paris in 1952, pages 195-234. This is the first English translation. The first issue of the Revue Wagnérienne saw the light of day in February 1885, on a Sunday, at the doors of the Concerts Lamoureux at…
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The poem that follows is translated from “Les Compagnons” by Léon Dierx (1838-1912), dedicated to Stéphane Mallarmé(1) and published in Les Amants (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1879). A Parnassian poet and close friend of Mallarmé, Dierx would later succeed Mallarmé as the unofficial “Prince of Poets.” The Companions In that remembered park where once I strayed,…
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◈–❀–◈ I recall the first time I encountered the title Akëdysséril, one of Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s tales. It appeared whilst I was reading Stéphane Mallarmé’s correspondence, at the close of his letter to Édouard Dujardin, dated Saturday [1st August 1885]. “What a dazzling work Akëdysséril is,” Mallarmé wrote. “I can think of nothing so…
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The text that follows, an excerpt from Mirbeau’s 1890 Le Figaro article, serves as an introduction to this absolutely masterly collection of literary criticism—one that, once read, will captivate you for life. Yes, it’s that good. Reading it is like being swept up into a gigantic, ever-intensifying tornado, with beautiful and devastating thunderbolts shattering everything…
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Octave Mirbeau’s scathing reflection on journalism exposes the degradation of truth in Parisian media—cronyism, sensationalism, and lost integrity—calling for a radical rebirth of sincerity, bold criticism, and moral courage. I spent eight months away from Paris, living in a Breton village amongst farmers and fishermen, somehow absorbed into their hardy existence and rough labour. It…
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Title page of Feu et Flamme by Philothée O’Neddy (Théophile Dondey), published by Librairie Orientale de Dondey-Dupré, Paris, 1833. AVANT-PROPOS An author, head held high, in his proud preface,May cry to the public he insults: Make way!… Long enough, motionless and with arms crossed upon the threshold of my pariah’s hut, have I contemplated, in…
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SPLEEN MANFREDPatience and patience! Hence—that word was madeFor brutes of burthen, not for birds of prey;Preach it to mortals of a dust like thine, —I am not of thine order.CHAMOIS HUNTERThanks to heaven!I would not be of thine for the free fameOf William Tell…Lord Byron. Oh! how my days’ monotonous rotationAffrights my thought and crowns…
Léon Hennique Novel 